How does Wilde use dramatic comedy to explore gender roles of upper-class Victorians?
Wilde effectively and regularly utilises the typical conventions of dramatic comedy to present a plot in which characters move away from a strict Victorian society: especially with regard to gender roles. Adhering to the conventions of a typical Comedy of Manners play, Wilde aims to comment, and most likely mock a civilisation heavily concerned with appearances, and upholding traditional values. He also firmly follows the codes of a dramatic comedy by using comic inversions to create a sense of disorder and subsequently discomfort within audiences, particularly Victorians. Wilde repeatedly questions the idea of the role of both women and men in the rigid, Victorian era and is shown to both conform and subvert the differing expectations of both sexes.
Primarily, Wilde portrays our two male leads as on the surface, high class males leading a stereotypical 'bachelor' lifestyle, initially adhering to the masculine gender role. The first discussion we see between Algernon and Jack centres around the art of 'bunburying', referring to a single male who is able to travel around the country by forming an elaborate deception, yet remaining respectable and conservative on the surface, a hobby in which both of our male leads partake in.
After Jack's admission of pretending to have 'a younger brother of the name of Earnest' we learn that this excuse allows Jack to travel up to town to socialise, leading a generally luxurious lifestyle, unknown to those who remain at his country home, this plot point links to a typical feature of a Comedy of Manners play, that the countryside was generally dull, while cities were thriving. Jack’s lifes...
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Irony in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde The play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde is full of irony. Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, the protagonists in the play, get themselves into a complicated situation called Bunburyism (as Algernon refers to it). They pretend to be someone that they are not to escape their daily lives. They lie to the women they admire, and eventually the truth is revealed.
"I think it is high time that Mr Bunbury made up his mind whether he
...erpreted as dark and significant to the period. The comedy Wilde achieves is at the expense of the characters who are seemingly intelligent adding to the ironic structure that much of the comedy is based on. Many of the comic elements of the play are shown through human reactions to Victorian repression and the effect it has on the men and women of the time. Love seems to be nonexistent within the finds of the fierce and brutal Aristocracy when so many of the qualities they value are not based on human qualities but that of the class’s social norms. Wildes Characters are at often times not subtle about their distaste in marriage and love, Algernon is no exception to this “In aried lie, three is company, two is none” showing that they all have distorted views on many of the social practices that make them morally sound, thus adding to the satire elements of the play.
Throughout The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde plays around with the standard expectations along with the absence of compassion of a Victorian society in the 1890’s, he demonstrates this through several genres of comedy such as Melodrama, Comedy of Manners, Farce, dark humour and Irony, as well as portraying the themes, death and illness, in this play in a brilliance of unusual amount of references.
In conclusion, The Importance of Being Earnest strongly focuses on those of the upper class society and the vanity of the aristocrats who place emphasis on trivial matters concerning marriage. Both Algernon and Jack assume the identity of "Ernest" yet ironically, they both are beginning their marital lives based on deception and lies. Lady Bracknell represents the archetypal aristocrat who forces the concept of a marriage based on wealth or status rather than love. Through farce and exaggeration, Wilde satirically reveals the foolish and trivial matters that the upper class society looks upon as being important. As said earlier, a satiric piece usually has a didactic side to it. In this case, Lady Bracknell learns that the same person she was criticising is actually her own flesh and blood.
“Jack: [Lady Bracknell] is perfectly unbearable …she is a monster, without being a myth” (Wilde 15). Lady Bracknell is a formidable character in the Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, an absurd play that explores high society’s ridiculous ideals in the early 20th century while simultaneously playing with gender roles. Wilde uses Lady Bracknell to emphasize the societal perception of gender on the Victorian classes and the flawed effect of society and social roles on these perceptions. Gender roles of the time typically display men as socially interactive, and well-known among other families of the same class. However, in The Importance of Being Earnest, things are quite different in Upper Class Society.
Oscar Wilde begins with a joke in the title that is not only a piece of frivolity. It concerns the problem of recognising and defining human identity. The use of earnest and Earnest is a pun, which makes the title not only more comic, but also leads to a paradox. The farce in The Importance of Being Earnest consists in the trifle that it is important not only to be earnest by nature but to have the name Earnest too. Jack realizes "the vital Importance of Being Earnest"(53) not till the end of the play. Algernon calls the act of not being earnest Bunburying which gives the plot a moral significance. Bunburying means inventing a fictitious character by which one can escape the frustrating social norms. Algernon says to Jack:
In “The Function of Decorum at the Present Time: Manners, Moral Language, and Modernity in ‘an Oscar Wilde Play,’” Mackie believes “In The Importance of Being Earnest the staging decorum accomplishes more than an ironic mockery of the conventional moral shibboleths that police conduct.” Mackie is stating that Wilde uses the behavior and speech relevant to the Victorian culture. It has nothing to do with mockery, but giving respect to the culture and the way the Victorians lived. The purpose for writing this play was to show how different people celebrate life in a different way.
Throughout the late nineteenth century, Oscar Wilde wrote plays such as Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest- his most famous play. Earnest is a comedic work that focuses on a pair of wealthy men. They have been leading double lives so that they can go off for periods of time and enjoy living without responsibility while still maintaining their aristocratic reputation. Because of Wilde’s invlovement in the aesthetic movement, it is not uncommon (or unfair) to believe that his work, Earnest included, is nothing more than fluff. That being said, it is also fair to argue that this particular play does have meaning in it. Wilde wrote The Importance of Being Earnest as a commentary on the hypocrisy of the ideal Victorian character. Earnestness is sincerity- which most Victorians believed themselves to be- and so Wilde uses the word ironically. In his eyes, people who considered themselves sincere were actually smug, self-righteous, and pompous. He expresses these opinions clearly through the play’s over-the-top and frustrating characters.
A very intelligent novelist, Oscar Wilde, catches his reader’s attention in his satirical play, An Ideal Husband, through a humorous drama filled with political scandal and blackmail. Wilde sucks his audience into the romantic comedy by placing the reader with the characters throughout all their battles—in which he points out their bad habits and their faults. Wilde accomplishes drawing readers in by creating the satirical message of his play through satirical elements such as exaggeration, sarcasm, and irony. Wilde accomplishes achieving the satirical message that he intended for the readers through his use of exaggeration. He begins by Mrs. Cheveley spitefully telling Lady Chiltern that her “house” is “a house bought with the price of dishonor” and how “everything” in the house has “been paid for by fraud” (61).
Both Algernon and Jack assume the identity of "Ernest" yet ironically, they both plan on starting their married life with a lie. Lady Bracknell represents the typical aristocrat who focuses the idea of marriage on social and economic status. She believes that if the men trying to marry these girls are not of proper background, there is to be no engagement. Through this major exaggeration, Wilde satirically reveals the irrational and insignificant matters that the upper class society uses to view
Oscar Wilde was born in October 16, 1854, in the mid era of the Victorian period—which was when Queen Victoria ruled. Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901.While she ruined Britain, the nation rise than never before, and no one thought that she was capable of doing that. “The Victorian era was both good and bad due to the rise and fall of the empires and many pointless wars were fought. During that time, culture and technology improved greatly” (Anne Shepherd, “Overview of the Victorian Era”). During this time period of English, England was facing countless major changes, in the way people lived and thought during this era. Today, Victorian society is mostly known as practicing strict religious or moral behavior, authoritarian, preoccupied with the way they look and being respectable. They were extremely harsh in discipline and order at all times. Determination became a usual Victorian quality, and was part of Victorian lifestyle such as religion, literature and human behavior. However, Victorian has its perks, for example they were biased, contradictory, pretense, they cared a lot of about what economic or social rank a person is, and people were not allowed to express their sexuality. Oscar Wilde was seen as an icon of the Victorian age. In his plays and writings, he uses wit, intelligence and humor. Because of his sexuality he suffered substantially the humiliation and embarrassment of imprisonment. He was married and had an affair with a man, which back then was an act of vulgarity and grossness. But, that was not what Oscar Wilde was only known for; he is remembered for criticizing the social life of the Victorian era, his wit and his amazing skills of writing. Oscar Wilde poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” typifies the Vi...
When Jack was first caught in his lie he awkwardly says “Gwendolen- Cecily- it is very painful for me to to forced to speak the truth...I will tell you quite frankly that I have no brother Earnest.” (Wilde Act II. Scene 1. Line 6). This embarrassing confession is Wilde’s way of making a point: that living a double life almost always ends up terribly awkward and inconvenient. Lies become exposed more often than they remain
While at his country manor, the main protagonist, Jack Worthing, claims he must tend to his troublesome younger brother Earnest, who resides in London. Once